The Boys Are Doing Christianity Right

As C S Lewis makes clear in his writings, especially in The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity, Christianity is a religion of community. While it has always had a tiny corner for Kerouac’s “crazy, solitary Catholic mystics”, overwhelmingly Christianity is a communal religion. “For the Church is,” as Lewis writes, “the Body of Christ, in which all members, however different… must share the common life, complementing and helping one another precisely by their differences.”

So, are young men who are increasingly turning to church-going, or young women, who are expressing devotion through social media posts, more authentically Christian? Is a “desire to become more upstanding citizens”, or wanting the “imagery of devotion without the parish council”, what Jesus would do?

Something strange is happening in religion. For most of modern history, women filled the pews while men filed into the pub. Now, we have some interesting numbers to consider in the light of recent cultural trends: in Australia, Gen Z may be first generation where young men are more religious than young women. That’s according to data from NCLS Research’s 2022 Australian Community Survey, which found almost 40 per cent of men under 28 identify as Christian, against just under 30 per cent of young women.

In the US in 2025, Christian research group Barna found men outweighed women in church attendance 43 per cent to 36 per cent, with attendance on the rise for all young adults and Gen Z and Millenials the most engaged.

That’s what’s happening inside the building. The cultural surface tells a different story, and women are mostly driving it.

As you’ve probably already guessed, when it comes to young women, the ‘culture’ is overwhelmingly about narcissism.

Tradwife feeds flood the algorithm with saints on the wall, sourdough starters, modest dresses and three children under five shot like Caravaggio with a content strategy. Spanish artist Rosalia turns out LUX, an orchestral hagiography of only female saints that becomes a Billboard juggernaut. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives turns soft-swinging TikTok Mormons into Friends with funny underwear.

YouTube hit The Chosen is the rare crossover hit, but even there the women get the inner lives and emotional arcs while the men get fishermen who look like they belong in a Magic Mike film.

The girls want the soundtrack, the wardrobe, the mystery and absolutely no advice from a man in a collar.

The girls’ preference for this ‘female-driven’ religious experience is merely performatively self-centred. It is devotion as aesthetic: candles and cosmic stakes without the parish council, without the uncomfortable bits about sin, submission, accountability or actual sacrifice. It’s Jesus as a Labubu. Religion as OnlyFans: imagery of devotion without the common life Lewis insisted was the whole point.

Chuck Peters, director of Lifeway NextGen at America’s largest evangelical Christian publisher (whose research arm, Lifeway Research, has tracked church attendance for decades), thinks the surge of men is real but partial […]

The men who do show up, Peters suggests, may not be there for purely spiritual reasons. The return “seems to be more closely connected with a desire to become upstanding citizens with good morals and values who are successful in their careers and start businesses”.

Is the young men’s “desire to become upstanding citizens with good morals and values who are successful in their careers and start businesses” likewise self-centred? Only in the narrowest, most uncharitable reading. And even then, Adam Smith had the answer two-and-a-half centuries ago. Self-interest, rightly understood, produces public benefit. A young man who wants to be a reliable husband, a good father, a productive citizen and a business founder is pursuing exactly the sort of enlightened self-interest that builds families, congregations and communities.

That is not less spiritual: it is the very soil in which spiritual life takes root. It’s not some secular add-on. It is the practical outworking of the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself. It is the Body of Christ in action. To be sure, there are the Deus Vult memelords, whose actual faith is questionable, but young men who are parking their arses on the pews are at least taking the first step to the true Christian life.

The girls want the halo without the collar. The boys want the collar, the structure and the hard answers. One path flatters the self. The other submits the self to something older, larger and truer than the self. One produces viral TikToks. The other produces stable families, functioning parishes and the next generation of Christians who actually show up on Sunday.

Lewis knew which one built the church. So did Christ. The pews are filling with young men who have figured it out. The algorithm is full of young women who haven’t.